


i don't like the way the song goes.

by Pan



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Crossover, Gen, I don't know what I'm doing, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Series, This Was Supposed To Be A One Shot, Underage Drinking, Xander does nothing to stop it, but super loosely like SUPER loosely, don't even try to figure out where it's set in teen wolf, good luck, i haven't written fanfiction in 84 years, i'd like to apologize not only to god but also jesus, i'm auing that shit so hard, set somewhere vaguely during the beginning of the twilight arc for btvs, there were only two seasons i'm so happy the show ended before it got weird
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 19:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4717514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pan/pseuds/Pan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles & Xander meet in a gay bar. Hijinks ensue. Not in, like, a sexy way. In an apocalypse-y way. Because why would anything ever not be apocalypse-y in Southern California.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i don't like the way the song goes.

"Hey," rouses Xander from his Heineken staring contest. Eye bleary, his head jerks upward. "You don't think you're a little straight to be in a gay bar?"

There's a kid sliding into the chair in front of him. "You're teasing everybody, you know," the kid drawls. He gestures toward Xander— swirls his hand as he takes a swig of his Bud. "It's super unfair."

"Unfair, huh?" the Watcher asks, tilting his head. The kid nods.

Xander hasn't made it back to his bed-buggified motel room in three of the five days he's been here— he's been sleeping in the van Willow arranged— or maybe that she conjured— for him. For a second, he's not sure if the kid is real. If he's dreaming, or if maybe, someone spiked his drink.

The Watcher can't remember the name of this bar— can't remember if it's in a bad part of the town he's in right now, or if this town, small as it is, even has room to have a bad part.

He leans back in his own chair— files the things he's forgotten about as Things To Worry About When Sober, Assuming You Live To See Sober Again. He crosses his arms. He takes his time looking the kid up and down— appraising.

"If you ask me," Xander drawls back at the kid. Buzz cut. Flannel jacket. Wrinkles under his eyes that Xander's seen too many times not to recognize. His first guess is military brat.

The kid's throat stills mid-sip when he catches the Watcher's eye sweeping down his frame. Even in the blue tinge of the bar's neon, Xander can see a flush strangling the kid's neck— rushing for his cheeks. The tips of his ears. Maybe he should frequent more small-town gay bars.

He winks at the kid. Giggles when kid winds half choking on his drink, because of it. Used to being the object of blushing, Xander is most definitely of the _not_.

...please, god, don't let this kid be a demon.

The Watcher clears his throat. "You're a little _young_ to be in a bar at all." The kid blinks. Half chokes again once he remembers he has to swallow.

His eyes are so deer-in-headlight-ie that the only option Xander really has is continuing to laugh. The kid scrambles out of his seat— reminds Xander of himself, when he nearly trips over his own ankles and winds up sprawled on the bar floor.

Xander raises his hands— a gesture of good will. Of surrender. "I come in peace," he says, around his hiccoughing snrks. "I'm not here to narc on anybody." He remembers his Bronze days well enough. Remembers the fake IDs Oz's college buddies made. The way Buffy lost hers, and Xander couldn't memorize his, and how Willow had wound up having to stutter orders for all of them.

He's not in any position to judge adolescent indiscretion. Getting drunk's gotta be safer than spending a night in the cemetery, waiting for the apocalypse of the week. Especially in this town.

If there's anything the past weeks've taught Xander, it's that Beacon Hills is a Hellmouth in everything but the name.

"That's what you kids call it these days, right?" Xander asks. "...Narcing?"

"Uh," the kid says, intelligently. "Yeah...?"

"Good." The kid still hasn't sat back down. "I'm not gonna tell anybody if you don't wanna hang out, Buzzcut. The no narc policy isn't founded on an entertain-the-Xan-Man clause."

"The Xan-Man?" the kid repeats, barely swallowing down his own laugh. Xander cocks a brow.

"That's what I said." The Watcher sets his mouth in a line. Tries to shoot the kid a scowl; his heart isn't in it. The kid sits back down, grinning. "You got a problem with it?"

"Not if you don't got a problem with Stiles."

"Stiles," Xander repeats the name. He wonders if that's a first name, or a last, or an alias. He wonders what it means. "I can do that."

"Then it's smooth sailing, Xan-Man," the kid— Stiles— half-coos.

Nobody says anything else until the kid sets his Bud on the table and laughs into his hand. "My dad would kill me," he says. He shakes his head— flaps his hands, a little, at Xander's arched brow. "He's okay with me—" Stiles makes a gesture around them so vague Xander's not even sure the kid knows what it means.

"Dad's... He's not scummy or anything. He's a good guy. It's just the..." Stiles gestures toward the beer in his hand. He giggles— too bubbly to be sober. Mentally, Xander does the math on driving the kid home. Tallies the lies he'll need to spin to get the kid safely through a door against the laws the kid's breaking being here, against how many laws he'd be breaking if he let the kid sleep on the floor of his motel room.  
  
"It's the booze," another giggle, "you know?"

"I can imagine," Xander says. But he can't imagine, really. His father started offering him beer when he was eight. The Watcher rolls that thought off his back with his shoulders.

"Your old man," Xander asks.

Stiles hums his acknowledgment around his beer.

"He military?"

The kid chews his lip at that— glances at Xander through the corner of his eye. The Watcher's familiar with the I'm Coming Up With a Lie look, by now. Is practiced in identifying it in more forms than he can count. The kid shrugs, after a second. "Something like," he finally offers. He doesn't look back at the man he's seated himself in front of.

Xander's can't decide if he should roll his eye or laugh, so he does both. _Secrets_. He's familiar with those. He takes another sip of his beer. Nods. "Same here," he says.

"Yeah?" The kid's eyes light up; he reigns himself in. He clears his throat. "You or your dad?" he asks, voice too deep— the obvious end of trying to weed out his enthusiasm.

Xander swallows his laugh, this time. No need to dent the kid's ego when he thinks he's being sly. "Me." It's not a lie; the Council might not be a formal union attached to a particular country, but it's not really Girl Scouts, either.

"You're military?" The kid's chin is in his hands. Something like awe swimming in his eyes. "What branch? Coast guard? Army?"

"Is that how you—" the kid cuts himself off. Blinks. He stuffs the hand he was raising to his face in his lap. Sinks back in his chair. Folds his hands in his lap and stares down at them as if they're suddenly the most interesting thing in the room.

"Came to be the most dedicated pirate cosplayer of the whole northern hemisphere?" the Watcher finishes.

The kid sinks further back into his chair. Tries to hide behind his beer as he nods. Xander flashes the kid the least baleful smile he can manage. He's used to the question by now. You don't have your eye gouged out, wind up saddled with the world's itchiest eye-patch, and just _not_ get asked about it.

...not that Xander's bitter or anything. The eye's a byproduct of the world he's in; plain ol' Mortal Moes don't get to toil in god's domain for free. In the grand scheme of things, Xander knows he's lucky it's only just yet been his eye.

That doesn't mean he has to _like_ it.

The Watcher blinks. Realizes he's been staring at the kid— and that the kid knows he's been staring at him, by the way his lap's practically smoking under his own eyes. "Uh," the Watcher says, just as intelligently as the kid before him.

"Uh," the kid says back to him.

"IED in Afghanistan." Xander's told one version or another of this story enough that he doesn't need to think about it anymore. "Piece of shrapnel nearly lodged itself in the back of my skull. You wouldn't believe how clingy nails can be."

The kid nods, but doesn't say anything. Not about the eye.

He leans across the table to tap on the war ragged notebook Xander has splayed in front of him. "Latin?" he asks.

Nice segue. "You can read it?" Xander asks.

"Only a little." The kid shrugs. He's still leaning across the table. He's got his knee on the chair behind him for leverage. "I don't have a big enough boner for conjugation to whole-hog it."

Xander drags the notebook— his journal— out from under the kid's fingers. "It's a dead language."

"Really rude of latin-ites to write in it, right?" The kid pulls his hands back to himself. The smile stretched across his face at his own joke falls as reassumes the traditional sit-in-a-chair maneuver. Stiles wraps his hands around his beer. Busies his fingers, picking at the label.

The way the bottle's turned, Xander can see, for the first time, how ragged the nailbed is. Cuticles raw and red from biting. He remembers hands like those. They were Willow's, senior year.

 _Eesh_. If he'd of known being back in southern California would do such a number on his longstanding ability to repress That Which is Undesirable(TM), Xander would've let one of the girls come take care of it, after all. "What crawled up you, kid?"

The kid looks pensive. Like someone threw thumbtacks on his chair while he was kneeling on it— which is dumb because the Watcher was there the whole time. He would've _seen_  that. "You..." Pensive looks weird on the kid's face. Looks nervous. The kind of nervous a face that young isn't supposed to have, not in a bar. Not with somebody who isn't going to call the cops about it. "You can read latin, huh?"

Xander wants to backtrack— wants to say he's not really The Latin Guy. That he can't read it half as well as most of the Council. Is like a fumbling baby compared to Willow, which isn't fair, most people are, but— but none of that is what the kid's asking.

The Watcher nods. "If I have to."

"Can you—" the kid stands up. Winds up throwing his chair backward with how quickly he jumps out of it. Luckily, the bar's mostly empty. The only thing the chair connects with is a divider— and the thunk isn't too loud.

"I'll be right back. Wait here, okay?" Xander has a funny feeling it's not a question. "Please. Two seconds." Stiles is already halfway across the bar— beyond the broken air-hockey tables, all but sprinting for the door.

"Sure," Xander calls, for his own benefit. The door's already shut behind the kid.

The Watcher has this funny little feeling tickle the back of his throat.

He's just about come to terms with the fact that he can't shake the notion that he's _not_ going to enjoy whatever the kid comes back with, when the kid comes sprinting back through the door, something wrapped in black, ragged silk hoisted over his head.

Xander has four seconds to brace for impact before the kid slams into the table, wrapped-thing first. The kid's beer bottle slides backward off the table. Kisses the floor before Xander can quite get his hand out to catch it, and shatters— the kid's last few dregs splashing across the concrete.

If the kid's torn up about losing the drink, he does a great job of hiding it.

"Xan-Man," he heaves. "Xan. Thanks."

"You need a second?"

"Me? A second?" The kid tries to laugh. He winds up wheezing. He waves a hand instead— huffs, dismissive. "I've never been— I've never been better. Totally—" he props himself against the brick wall next to their table. Coughs. "Totally cool, dude. Just unwrap that."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, yeah. The wrap's just what I found it in."

The Watcher tries to keep his eyebrows on his forehead as he looks from Stiles to the book. Wrapped neatly around something hard and rectangular, the silk isn't just ragged— it's stained. Dyed black in the blue light of the bar— they're probably red, if Xander remember's anything about color theory. They're flaking— peeling.

Xander prays to whichever god happens to be listening that it isn't blood.

"I didn't know if it was important," the kid says. He's picking at his cuticles. Ripping the skin, Xander thinks; it's too dark to see if they're bleeding for sure or not. "Last freaking thing I need, right? To lose a part."

"A part?" Xander repeats.

"Yeah." The kid doesn't offer any explanation beyond that.

The Watcher pulls one of the corners away from the others. Is relieved when he sees the familiar rippling of leather, rather than some bleeding creature. He slides the book out of its wrapping.

Stiles moves from his fingers— all but gnaws on his bottom lip as he watches Xander run his hands over the white leather cover. Tan, calloused fingers run along the black impressions on what must be the cover.

"These are runes," Xander says. He glances up from the book, fingers still tracing the swooping characters. He can feel the grit of the impressions on his fingers. Soot. "Not latin."

Xander thinks, maybe, he gets where the creases bordering the kid's eyes come from now. Better not to turn a glance into another stare, Xander looks back down. He leans closer to the book. To it's unfamiliar shapes. He doesn't recognize them; Willow probably will.

"It's a code," Stiles says around his lip. "I think."

"A code?" The Watcher shakes his head. It's not a code. "The things you kids come up with," he sighs, not unfondly.

The kid's opening his mouth to object when Xander jerks his hand back as if burned.

"What?" is what falls out of Stiles' mouth, instead of his objection. Xander presses his hand to his chest. Hisses, under his breath. "What happened?" the kid asks, rolling forward to the balls of his feet. Invading the Watcher's personal space.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

"I'm fine," the Watcher says, through grit teeth. He hopes he is. He pushes the kid— pushes Stiles back with his good hand. The one that isn't bombarding him with searing pain.

"You don't sound fine." Perceptive.

Xander grits his teeth harder. "I..." he what? "I need to make a call."

The Watcher looks back down on the book. Half expects it to have a dagger wedged, pointy-side-up, slick with his blood. There's nothing like that. Just a white book with black symbols.

Of course.

Why would things be as simple as trick stabbings when they could be _Sunnydale_. Even as the world's biggest sinkhole, it's still got hold of him. Has wormed its way into his lexicon.

"What's it say?" the kid asks. He's quiet, now. Fidgeting in silence.

Xander doesn't have it in his heart to tell the kid he doesn't know. The Watcher fishes his phone out of his pocket— manages to take a photo, one-handed. "Wait here, Stiles," he says.

" _What_?"

"Just give me two seconds." His good hand is sweating— fumbling over the buttons; he manages to send the picture to Willow. He misses the days when phones had the good sense to have keypads.

Oh, sweet Christ. He's becoming Giles. He's becoming Giles, and he doesn't even have time to have a crisis over it. "I gave you two seconds."

"Unfair."

"It's the _definition_ of the word fair." Xander tries to keep his discomfort out of his voice; he winds up breathless, anyway. "Two minutes."

"I said two seconds," the kid says.

The Watcher shrugs as well as he can without moving his hand. "I get interest." He pushes open the back entrance to the bar with his shoulder. "Clean up that beer before the bartender notices you broke it." Stiles fumbles for a response; he gets cut off. "And _don't touch that thing_."

The door clicks shut behind him.

The Watcher leans against the brick wall next to the door. Lets himself slump against it as he dials. Lets himself shudder as the wind streams through the alley, and the phone against his ear starts to ring.

"Ms. Rosenberg speaking."

Xander smiles at her chirped greeting; he tries to. "Thought that was your mother?"

"Xander!" He can practically see the smile on her face. Can hear her breathe in, and all but see her brows furrow. Her expression fall. "What's wrong?" she asks.

She always _knows_. "Was there a problem with the van? With the girl?"

"Yeah," Xander cuts her off before she gets a chance to get started. "Funny thing, that. We've got a problem..." despite his better efforts, his tone doesn't sound very funny at all.

He winces as he pries his hand away from his chest. Swallows a Totally Masculine scream when the warm, dry July wind ebbs gently against his palm. "But it's none of those," Xander hisses through his teeth.

Black, and angry, and pulsing. Stark against his tan palm: a perfect circle, cut in half. Like the tattoo Xander never wanted— a brand. "Check your phone, Wills."

Maybe Southern California is going to be the death of him after all.

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be a one-shot that i'd wanted to write for like a year/two but 150 words in i realized i'd made a huge mistake & couldn't turn back. now we're in hell together. :)))


End file.
